We don’t usually have a big blowout Thanksgiving dinner, with adding all the leaves in the table and scouring all over the house to find enough chairs for every one to sit in. It’s usually a small affair, and it was this year, also. I got Peter from school on the Friday before the holiday and Kevin and April came on Wednesday. We are careful, as are they, and we’ve been together a few times over the summer and fall and felt comfortable being together.
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- One morning, Peter invented a scenario involving Playmobile people and equipment from sets that belonged to Kevin and Jeremy.
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- He set it up on a board from a game we have had, probably since Kevin and Jeremy were kids. There was an epic storyline, and many more props and characters were added over the course of the morning.
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- Later, he decided that he would like to actually play the game. We cleared away the pirates and island, and set up the game pieces. I won the first game, quite handily. He, however, won the second game, but just by one point.
I was trying to get ahead of all the baking, etc. Monday, Peter and I measured out bread dough ingredients and put them in the bread machine and pressed the “dough” button.
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- When the bread machine beeped, I pulled out the dough, and we made some cloverleaf rolls. First, we had to do some math. We could make nine rolls, and each roll needed three pieces.Peter only needed a few minutes of thinking to come up with the solution. Twenty-seven pieces for nine rolls.
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- Then, we left the house to go get sandwiches to take to David, at work. Then, after we ate, we ran an errand. When we got home, the rolls had risen. Wildly! The rolls were HUGE. Delicious, at Thanksgiving, but pretty big.
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- Before I picked Peter up, the previous Friday, I had done some grocery shopping and bought a variety of crackers. Peter made an evaluation chart. The oyster crackers on the right were deemed the most delicious.
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- On Tuesday, Peter helped me fill the green yard waste bins with leaves. Leaves, leaves, and more leaves. It made a comfortable place to read.
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- Thursday morning, Kevin found a site that gave instructions for folding cloth napkins for our Thanksgiving table. He and Peter made a variety of shapes for us.
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- On Friday, we pulled out the tree we have used for a few years. Some of the lights had stopped working. There were small bulb lights and large bulb lights. I had tried to remove some of the non-functioning lights, with a small amount of success. And, I had purchased some to add to the tree. April tried to make it all work, but it seemed like it was going to be significantly more effort that was reasonable.
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- So Kevin and April went off to find a new tree for us. They did a LOT of looking and evaluating and choosing and driving around, but found this delightful tree. We got it all decorated on Friday evening.
Listen! A virgin will be pregnant, she will give birth to a Son, and he will be known as “Emmanuel,” which means in Hebrew, “God became one of us.”
Matthew 1:23 (The Passion Translation)
O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
I’m glad to see that Survive! lives on!
It very much does! Sorry you’re not here to play with us, too.